Something In Between
by Aisho9
Summary: Draco has an assignment: kill Ginny Weasley, or else. Trouble is figuring out how to actually do it -- that is, if he can get up the courage first. Draco/Ginny, Harry/Ginny.


The leaves were turning colors and the chill of winter setting in. Fall tests would be coming up in a few weeks, but the students at Hogwarts were doing all they could to forget about it, enjoying what little warmth was left before winter arrived in full force. Some of them milled about on the lawns, wrapping up in their cloaks and scarves, but the brisk Saturday afternoon found one Hogwarts student deep within the halls, looking through the library bookshelves.

The library was not—most _emphatically_ not—the place Draco Malfoy wanted to be on a Saturday afternoon. He wanted to be outside with Crabbe and Goyle, knocking around first years and messing with the Quidditch flags so that all the Gryffindor flags were green instead of red like they'd been planning. Instead he was here, leafing through books like he actually cared a hoot about school. He hid whenever he heard voices, just in case it was someone he knew. Merlin, the things Blaise would say if they caught him studying!

Or—worse yet—the things _Potter_ would say. He shuddered.

Of course, he wasn't actually studying. Draco didn't study unless he had to. He was in the library on a precious hell-raising Saturday because Draco was wholly and utterly terrified. He'd been given an assignment. More of a test, really, but the word "test" made him want to throw up, so it was an assignment. If he could do it, they'd take him seriously, and make him a Deatheater for real, just like his father.

He just had to figure it out, is all. Killing someone wasn't easy. Being underage, he couldn't just use the Killing Curse. He'd be red flagged in a second. No, he was going to have to be smarter than that, think of something creative that couldn't ever be tied to him. It was going to take a lot of planning, and the first step was to raid the library and find the perfect combination of curses and hexes. He was the tiniest bit worried that he'd screw it all up, but he was reasonably confident that the actual killing part wouldn't be a problem. It was just a Weasley, after all.

Draco subconsciously swelled with pride. He could think of a thousand things easier than murder, but the idea of getting to kill a Weasley made it all worth while, especially knowing what the death would do to Potter. _Hit him where it hurts, my boy,_ his father had said.

"Malfoy?" a voice asked, and Draco spun, accidentally sending the books in his arms clattering to the ground. Granger was looking at him with raised eyebrows, her arms folded confidently across her chest. This was her domain, after all. He knew she practically lived in here. He just hadn't thought she'd be in the library on such a nice day.

His stomach clenched. If Granger was here, then Potter …

"What do you need with—" She peeked at the books on the floor, lying open to a hundred nefarious things. "—Offensive and Defensive Curses, Part Four?"

"Nothing I'm likely to tell _you_," Draco snapped, letting the unspoken insult "mudblood" hang in the air. She'd sock him if he said it, and the coward in him wasn't quite ready to go through that again. He'd never admit that he was afraid of her—because he wasn't!—but he knew better than to wake a sleeping dragon. Not to mention it would bring Potter and Weasley down on his head, and he didn't have Crabbe and Goyle for back up.

He could take them, though. Probably. If he wanted to. Which he didn't.

Granger rolled her eyes. "Well, if you don't mind, I need to get past you."

For a second, he contemplating telling her to shove off, but making a scene would only draw more attention to the books, so he just sneered at her and picked up the books. He was about to pick up the last when Granger made a sound and snatched it away, flipping eagerly though the pages. "That's _mine_, Granger," Draco said, his voice tight with anger. She didn't appear to care.

"You'll get it back in a minute. I'm looking something up."

"I can see that. Give it back."

She ignored him, moving over to a table so that she could scribble down the hex she'd found. Draco followed her, looking down at the page, where it described in detail how to make your enemy vomit constantly for up to twenty-four hours. Perplexed, he heard himself saying, "What do you need _that_ for?"

"I'm not likely to tell _you_," Granger said, without a moment's hesitation, though her eyes never raised from the page. Malfoy was struck by the sudden impression that Granger didn't find him the least bit intimidating. He'd always fancied that she feared him, a least a little. He found the revelation oddly crushing.

He changed tactics. "Revenge?"

She finished transcribing the directions onto a spare bit of parchment and sighed as she straightened. "Ginny has boy problems, not that it's any of your business. Any particular reason you care?"

"No." She didn't look as if she believed him. Draco wasn't all that surprised, considering how he didn't believe it himself. "Give me the book back, Granger."

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but she gave it back anyway. Draco watched her leave, but he couldn't remember afterward if she went right or left, because he was busy thinking how he could use this to his advantage. Maybe he wouldn't have to do the killing himself after all. Some well placed advice, a few spells of influence, and presto: whoever this boy was, he would do Draco's assignment for him, and think it was all his idea. Draco would be a Deatheater and no one would ever remotely suspect that he was involved. It was perfect. Brilliant, even.

The Weasley girl would be dead before Christmas.

o-o-o-o

Having determined what, exactly, his plan was, Draco set about figuring out how he would make it happen. The first step was to find out who the boy was that Weasley was having trouble with. To do that, he began tailing the Weasley girl, hiding behind pillars and peering around corners. It wasn't as much fun as it had sounded and after several hours of missed classes and useless observations he was thinking about giving up when he finally struck gold.

They were nearing the Great Hall, where Draco would have to linger back and wait until Weasley moved on, because there was no place to hide. He was almost convinced that the whole thing was a bust when one of the Gryffindor boys came out of nowhere and dragged Ginny to the side by the elbow.

_Finally_, Draco thought, and waved his wand casually at his ears so that he could hear what they were saying.

"Don't give me this crap," the boy was saying, his expression thunderous. "We both know you didn't mean a word of it. You know you love me, Gin."

Draco felt like sticking his finger in his mouth and gagging, however childish the gesture might be. What sap!

"I told you to leave me alone, Tyler," Weasley said in retort, her voice calm despite the obvious anger in her eyes. She didn't want to be standing there one iota. Well, that was fine. Draco's plan didn't hinge on Weasley wanting anything to do with her ex-beau. If anything, it made things easier.

"C'mon, Ginny. Be serious. This is just a hiccup. You'll get over it."

The kid would not take a hint. Even Draco could see she didn't want anything to do with him, and Draco was by no means an expert on Weasleys.

"No, I won't, Tyler." Her eyes glinted fiercely in the low light of the torches. "_No one_ touches me like that and gets away with it."

"You can't honestly want me to believe you didn't like it," the Tyler kid said. Draco felt the corners of his mouth beginning to turn down. It wasn't that he disapproved of the idea of a Weasley getting hurt. It was more … well, it was the principle of the thing, really. Gryffindors were supposed to be upstanding.

Though maybe it was excusable, seeing as how Weasley was trash.

But still.

"_Didn't like it?_" Her rage was so powerful Draco could almost feel it, like the heat of dragon's fire—it didn't matter how far away you where, if you were in sight of it, you could feel the uncomfortable warmth on your face. He was pretty sure that if he'd been standing even an inch closer his eyebrows would have singed. He saw her hand go to her wand, but it never made it there, because Tyler had reached out and grabbed her hand. Such was Tyler's grip that her fingers were turning white under the pressure.

"You don't want to do that," Tyler hissed.

"No, I think I do," Ginny hissed right back.

Draco was beginning to think it was getting out of hand. If this went too far, he'd lose his opportunity to guide this in the right direction, and he wasn't sure if he was smart enough to recover from a screw-up that big. That wasn't to say Draco was dumb. Absolutely not. The Malfoys were always intelligent. He was just smart enough to know that everything would get a whole lot harder if he let this conversation fly out of control.

He weighed his options. He could casually walk by, but his gut told him Tyler would just wait until he was past to continue. Maybe he'd bump into Tyler; it could transfer the anger to Draco instead, but that could end with Draco having to defend his honor by dueling, and he wasn't anxious to do anything dangerous.

Tyler's grip on Ginny was tightening. Draco could see the pain in her face, though she tried to hide it, and for some inexplicable reason, the sight made him angry. Tyler was going to blow the whole job and Draco would have to think of a new, riskier plan. That was not okay.

"Oh, how precious," Draco cooed, strolling down the hallway towards Weasley and her overzealous ex-beau. He stopped just out of striking distance from Tyler and sneered at Weasley. "Don't tell me you're playing with _this_, Tyler. It's a Weasley, you know."

There. He'd never met the kid in his life, but now he was on a first name basis and he'd reduced the Weasley girl to a genderless object in the space of a breath. Tyler stared at him incredulously, obviously trying to understand why on earth Draco was speaking to him, while Ginny took the chance to wrench her hand free of Tyler's.

o-o-o-o

"Don't talk about her like that," Tyler said, still gazing at Draco in confusion. Ginny began backing away, cradling her hurt hand to her stomach. She met Draco's eyes from behind Tyler's shoulder, and though his insult and his sneer had been in perfect character, she could have sworn something like a smile tipped his lips before he gave an artful eye roll and sauntered away.

Tyler turned to look for her, but she was already gone, turning the corner into the Great Hall, where her brother and his friends were waiting. They looked up when she entered, smiling, and were every one of them on their feet before she'd made it three steps. She immediately tried to rearrange her features into something a little less frightened, but the damage was done. Ron was striding towards her, already getting red in the face, and Harry was clenching and unclenching his fists the way he did when he was getting ready to beat someone to a pulp.

Hermione spoke first. "What on earth happened? Was it Tyler again?"

"He's not taking the break up well," Ginny admitted, though saying so was probably going to get Tyler thrown off one of the towers by midnight. "He was trying to—uh—convince me to come back."

"By doing _this_?" Ron snarled, staring down at her hand, where the red imprint of Tyler's fingers was still visible.

She rubbed it absently. "He's stronger than you'd think. I didn't think I was going to get away from him, to be honest. I was going to start yelling, but—"

"But what?" Hermione encouraged, her voice gentle, at odds with the expression on her face, which had more in common with Harry and Ron's.

"Well—I know this is going to sound crazy—but Malfoy sort of saved me." They looked at her blankly. "I know. I don't get it either. One minute Tyler was grabbing me, and the next Malfoy was there, and Tyler was distracted enough that I got away."

"I bet Malfoy would be furious if he realized that he'd helped you," Ron muttered, and Harry was nodding like this made perfect sense.

"I don't think it was an accident," Ginny said, but even Hermione was looking at her doubtfully.

"Ginny," Harry said carefully, "Malfoy doesn't do things like—like that."

"You don't think I _know_ that?" Ginny demanded irritably. "Look, just forget it, okay? Next time Tyler comes around I'll have my wand already drawn. No worries."

They weren't going to forget anything any time soon, but they weren't going to get expelled for beating Tyler Bishop to death unless Ginny asked them to (or he went so far that asking was no longer required). Ginny didn't mention Malfoy's behavior to them again, but after that she had a hard time looking at Malfoy and seeing the same petty, mostly ridiculous school bully she'd known so long. She got to looking at him and saw something a little more than that. When he wasn't putting out his usual clumsy insults and performing his pointless pranks, he was watching, watching everything, really _seeing_ what was going on.

She tried not to think about it, but if Malfoy wasn't as dumb as he acted, then maybe he hadn't stopped by just to trade insults. Maybe he'd stopped by for another reason … like getting Tyler away from her.

It was too bad he was such a weasel. If his father weren't a Deatheater and everything about him slimy and unappetizing, she might have actually started to believe there was a heart under all that worthless Slytherin bluster.

o-o-o-o

Confident that Tyler was the perfect vehicle for Draco's success, he moved ahead with the next phase of his plan: convincing Tyler that, first of all, Draco was a friend, and second of all, that Ginny Weasley needed to die. The first part would be the hardest. Draco was well aware of his reputation amongst the Gryffindors, and had indeed done his utmost to keep that reputation. He used a combination of influence spells and butterbeer to get Tyler to let down his guard long enough for Draco to play his I'm-actually-a-nice-guy card.

It was a newly created card, minted especially for the occasion. Draco had never had to be a nice guy before, not even once. Tyler seemed pretty skeptical at first (probably because Draco was so awful at it) but by the third butterbeer Draco had gotten the hang of it somewhat, and Tyler had relaxed enough to tell Draco all about the Ginny Debacle.

Apparently—Draco was not entirely sure that it was the truth, because Tyler was not entirely bright and utterly delusional where Ginny was concerned—Tyler and Ginny had started going steady about a month previous, and things were going pretty well until Ginny decided to hang out with her friends instead of Tyler.

"Imagine!" Tyler lamented, taking a big gulp of butterbeer. "Her friends, over me! Her boyfriend! I've never been so insulted!"

After that, Tyler confided, he'd wanted to convince himself that Ginny still found him interesting, so he'd told her to swear that she would only hang out with him from now on. When she wouldn't do it, he "maybe got angry" (Draco correctly guessed this to be the point where he had laid hands on Ginny) and tried to remind her what fun they had together (more touching, Draco assumed) upon which Ginny then "had a fit" and told him they were over. Since then he'd been trying to convince her that it was all a big misunderstanding because they _obviously _belonged together forever.

Draco thought Tyler was a moron.

Still, once Tyler had spilled his guts, it didn't matter if Draco was Slytherin, he was Tyler's new best mate. By the end of the night Draco had Tyler saying how Draco was the only one who had ever understood his side of things. Draco rather thought this was because Tyler's side of things was low and despicable. However, being a future Deatheater, Draco knew that scum had its uses, especially to scum of higher quality.

Not that Deatheaters were scum. But they were on the same side, certainly.

The trouble was, Draco was having a hard time focusing on convincing Tyler to do his bidding. He kept thinking about the look on Ginny's face when he'd walked up, like she knew he'd done it for the express purpose of getting Tyler away from her, like she was thanking him. She didn't know any such thing, of course, because she was a Weasley, and therefore possessed zero actual insight.

Halfway through a spirited monologue extolling Ginny's beauty, Draco pleaded a prior engagement and ditched Tyler. He felt ashamed of himself—he should be devoting every waking second on guiding Tyler to the realization that Ginny Weasley had to die—but he couldn't handle another second of the guy's presence. It was like Tyler exuded some sort of poisonous aura, driving away even someone like Draco, who had been raised in close proximity to all sorts of underhanded characters.

What it pretty much came down to was that Tyler was the lowest sort of creature imaginable, lower than mudbloods, lower than _muggles_, even. Draco felt like taking a bath just for having stood in Tyler's presence. All that aside, though, what really got him about the whole thing was that Weasley had _gone steady_ with the brute. It boggled the mind. The Weasleys were obviously more stupid than even he had imagined.

He considered the possibility that Tyler might be too unstable for use. The weakness of Tyler's mind was of course the reason he was perfect, but if he unbalanced in all the wrong directions, well, Draco would have a mess on his hands and no way to fix it. If that were the case … he'd have to kill Weasley himself, and risk being caught himself.

Trying to imagine how exactly he might kill the Weasley girl without being caught, he failed entirely to see the other person walking along the lane towards Hogwarts, and quite unceremoniously crashed into them. Being much smaller in stature, the other person fell flat on the ground.

"_Watch_ where you're—" Draco began furiously, when he caught sight of the red hair and understood, like a lightning bolt from the sky, that it was Ginny Weasley. He stopped halfway through his sentence and never picked it up again. She got to her feet and began brushing off her bottom, though Draco could see (not that he looked!) that there wasn't very much dirt on her bottom at all.

"Didn't see you," she murmured, in something resembling a civil tone. Draco hadn't _ever_ been spoken to by a Weasley in such a tone. Her voice sounded so different he wasn't even sure it was her. It sounded … sweet. Pretty. He liked it.

No. No, he did not like her voice. He did not like it whatsoever and she was just a traitor, like her parents, and she deserved to die for that offense alone. And that was what he was going to do. Kill her. Kill her stone dead.

The setting sun made her hair look like it was on fire and flushed her cheeks, though maybe she was just blushing. He couldn't imagine why, though. He realized he was fiddling with his cuffs and stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Um," she said. Her eyes seemed more golden than brown with the sunlight hitting them like that, a fact which he wouldn't have known if she'd been looking at him. Instead she was looking out at the grass. It wasn't pretty grass or anything, just your common variety. Typical Weasley behavior, being interested in something so mundane. A Malfoy found beauty in refined things. Not grass. "Have I got something on my face?"

"I beg your pardon?" Draco asked, and visibly winced. A Malfoy absolutely, unequivocally, never-ever did two things: beg or ask pardon of _anybody_. Unless that somebody's name was Lord Voldemort, in which case, begging and asking pardon was done regularly, but that hardly counted.

"You're staring at me," Weasley said. Draco was about to tell her not to be daft, he would never stare at a Weasley, when he came to realize that he was doing precisely that. He immediately shifted his eyes to the patch of grass Weasley was looking at.

"Am not," Draco said, managing to sound irritated. It took more effort than he liked.

The silence stretched on. Draco wondered why she wasn't moving on and thought about walking away himself, but he didn't. They kept standing out in the growing cold and staring at grass and saying nothing. It was ridiculous. He glanced up the path—no one was coming either way.

It was a good opportunity. He could freeze her whole body and then make a sizable puddle for her to drown in. It would be a pathetic death, drowning in a few inches of water, and entirely fitting for a Weasley. It would be hard to trace it back to him, too, because the spells were relatively common.

"Why on _earth_ were you dating scum like _that_?" a voice demanded, and Draco found to his horror that it was _his_ voice. He barely resisted the urge to clap his hands over his mouth. He'd look like a fool if he did that. Malfoys were not fools. Well … mostly. His father had done some pretty foolish things over the years.

"You mean Tyler?" Ginny asked, raising her eyes to his. He blinked. Weasley, not Ginny. Weasley. That's all she was, a Weasley, and her eyes were brown, not golden, like he'd thought.

"He was charming, at first. Really witty. He had a lot of bravado—I'm a sucker for that, even though half the time I think it's ridiculous. By the time I realized what a git he was, I was already dating him." She shrugged. "It happens."

"Even _you're_ better than the likes of that," Draco said with a sniff. In his head it was insulting. When it came out, it was … not. In fact, it sounded remarkably like a compliment. His face got a little pinched. Ginny was looking at him, very surprised, but smiling, too, like it'd made her happy.

_Kill her now, you git, _Draco thought to himself fiercely. _Get it over with. Don't wait for Tyler, he'd only screw it up anyway—_

"Glad you think so," Ginny told him, and after sending him a confused glance resumed walking towards town. Draco waited until she was out of sight to begin exuberantly kicking at the grass, gouging and beating at it with his pointy leather shoes until clods of grass and dirt were flying everywhere.

"You—" Kick! "—are _such_—" Kick! "—a bloody git!" The last kick landed him on mud and he slipped, his feet flying out from under him. He landed squarely on his back right where Ginny—_Weasley!_ He meant Weasley—had fallen. He laid there, the cold of the ground seeping through his cloak, and glared at the red sky.

Tomorrow he'd start convincing Tyler to kill Weasley and make plans to kill her himself if push came to shove. No matter how revolting it was to be seen with the likes of Tyler, he'd do it. He had to, or he'd never be a Deatheater, and he'd be a failure to the entire family. One did not simply _let down_ the Malfoy family. You did precisely what they told you to, or else.

He also promised himself he'd never, ever speak face to face with Ginny Weasley again.

o-o-o-o

The second Malfoy was out of sight, Ginny broke into a run. She had to speak with Hermione. Immediately. The world was inverting, imploding, something, because Malfoy had complimented her. She thought. Maybe. It could have been an insult, but he'd looked so surprised when he'd said it, like maybe it had slipped out on accident. She had to tell _someone_. Malfoy wasn't a total pillock. Maybe just a small one.

She slowed a little, then stopped, her breath fogging out into the air. She was thinking about the last time she'd told them Malfoy had done something un-Malfoy, and how they hadn't believed her in the slightest, even though she wasn't someone to make up stories. Something like this … there was no way they'd believe her.

And why should they? All Malfoy had ever done was plague their family. It was stupid to think he would ever do otherwise.

Except …

No. Whatever she'd thought she'd seen in his face, it wasn't humanity, or anything close. Malfoy was Malfoy and that was that. She clamped her teeth together. _Get it together, Ginevra. You're losing it._ She waited until she'd caught her breath before resuming her walk towards the Three Broomsticks. As far as she was concerned, it had never happened.

o-o-o-o

Draco had a problem.

Tyler Bishop, his perfect and miraculous answer for killing Ginny Weasley without ever actually killing her, had been expelled before the deed could be done. He'd convinced him that Weasley was going to leave him forever unless Tyler did something drastic, like tie her to a chair. He was one step away from convincing Tyler that the only way to keep Weasley with him forever was to kill her, because otherwise she'd be alive enough to walk away. He was _this close_. Another couple of weeks, a month at most, and he'd have been helping Tyler plan Weasley's homicide.

Unfortunately, Potter had gotten to Tyler first. It was a mess. Tyler had a broken nose, a broken cheekbone, a broken jaw. His face looked like a troll had stepped on it, but the professors didn't care about that. Nope. Not a bit. No one else did, either, because Tyler had been writing Weasley notes (without Draco's permission, mind you) that were, to say in the least, unbalanced. Ron had wanted to do the beating himself, but there had been some question about whether or not he'd be able to stop hitting him before Tyler, well, died, so Potter had gone instead.

Turns out Potty Potter didn't have such a good handle on his temper as he thought. He'd had to be restrained by Snape _and_ Hagrid before he'd stopped laying off on Tyler. Once they found the wad of letters, Potter was given a big gold star and sent on his way, and Draco no longer had anyone to kill Weasley for him. It was almost Christmas, too late to recruit another psycho in the making (not to mention, being a Slytherin, Draco knew most of the loonies at Hogwarts, and there weren't very many stupid enough to kill Weasley, and none of them cared enough to do it).

Where did that leave Draco? He'd been doing his due justice, of course, and planning how he'd kill Weasley himself, but he'd never actually thought he'd have to do it. Now that he was faced with it, he found himself disturbingly unwilling to go through with it.

Draco had come to realize a long time ago that when it rained, it poured. Not two days after Tyler's removal from Hogwarts, he received a letter from his father.

_Draco-_

_I hope that you are making progress. Your mother and I anxiously await your success. Much depends on this, as you know; it would not do to neglect your duties. I am sure I will be hearing from you soon, with good news._

_L.M._

And _then_, on top of everything else, he'd accidentally called Crabbe and Goyle "grotty, manky nancies" and maybe a few other things. He was just stressed, is all, and they were being so bloody daft about everything, he couldn't get a single thing done. They hadn't taken kindly to that and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of them for almost two weeks now. He was reasonably sure they weren't coming back.

His father's letter in his hands, Draco calmly got up from the dinner table, left the Great Hall, walked with measured steps to an abandoned part of the school with a lot of windows overlooking the lake, and proceeded to scream the entirety of his frustrations into the darkness.

When he no longer had air in his lungs with which to scream, he sagged weakly against the windowsill and sucked in a long breath. His throat felt raw.

"Really now?" a voice said, amused, and he looked up at Ginny, somehow unsurprised to find her standing there. He looked at her for a moment, the object of his frustration and failure, and then began to methodically rip up his father's letter. He'd just kill her tonight, right now, and then it'd all be over. Afterward, there were four possible scenarios, and he no longer cared which fate dealt him.

Scenario one: he succeeds, totally, without question. He is made a Deatheater and finally lives up to (some) of his father's expectations.

Scenario two: he succeeds, but Potter suspects him, and his face is made to closely resemble Tyler Bishop's.

Scenario three: he succeeds, but makes some mistake, and is therefore caught, and sent to Azkaban to live out the rest of his life, without even a wand to keep his hair shiny.

Scenario four: he fails, and is either killed in the attempt, killed afterward by Potter, or shipped off to Azkaban (see scenario three).

None of them really appealed to him. Scenario one of course was the most painless, but he failed to see how a life under Lord Voldemort's thumb could be a success for anyone. Voldemort gave him the creeps, actually, and he didn't blame Potter one iota for having nightmares, because he had them too. His father, though, would never forgive him, and Draco did not exist in a world where he did not try to please his father.

His father's fine parchment was rendered into tiny bits of bone-colored confetti and cast out the window. Ginny watched him do this in perfect silence, her expression respectful. Her hair looked almost brown in the darkness, without the sunlight to show its true nature. He could still see her freckles though. He'd never liked Weasley freckles. Imperfections of the skin were never attractive to him. Her's, though, didn't look all that bad, at least in this light.

It made sense that Draco would have to kill the one moderately appealing member of the Weasley family.

"What was that all about?" she asked at last, when he had moved away from the window and sat down against the wall. "Bad news?"

_For you,_ he thought, and shrugged instead.

She moved to the window, looked out and down, where the remains of his father's letter must have fallen. It would have been so easy to reach out and shove her over the edge. He found his hands would not move and simply watched her. The moonlight caught in her hair, and when she turned back to look at him her face was haloed in red-flecked silver.

"You've been acting weird, Malfoy," she said at last, sitting down on the windowsill. There was still an opportunity to kill her, then. He just had to lean forward and do it. Lean forward and step into the life his father had chosen for him, the only life he could hope to have. It was the only life a Malfoy _could_ have. Malfoys defended the purity of magic. Knights of the pure, or whatever.

His hands still weren't moving.

"Want to tell me why?"

Couldn't hurt. He was going to kill her anyway, because he didn't have a choice. "I'm supposed to kill you. It's my initiation to be a Deatheater."

Her expression didn't change, though it was hard to tell, with her face in shadow like that. "Why haven't you, then? It isn't like you haven't had plenty of chances." He noticed that she hadn't moved from the window.

"I was going to use Tyler," he mumbled, looking away from her. "He was more cracked than I thought. Waste of time."

"And now?"

"And now I do it myself." He lifted his hands, looked at them. "Once I get my hands to work properly." He dropped his hands down into his lap. "I will do it, you know. Whether or not Potter beats my face in afterward."

Her eyebrows hitched upward. "What? Malfoy doesn't care if his best asset gets ruined?"

"You think that matters?" Draco demanded. "You think I _care_? What is this face going to get me when I work for Lord Voldemort? Not a blessed thing. And if I'm not working for him, it means I screwed this up, which means—either I'm dead, or I'm in Azkaban, and let's face it, I'm not going to need a straight nose either way."

"So you have to kill me. Now what?" She got up from the window, sat down beside him. "You haven't even so much as touched me. You've helped me, even. And now you're spilling your guts, telling me what you have to do—why?"

"Does it matter what you know if you're dead?" Draco asked.

She considered. "It does if someone finds a medium."

He hadn't thought of that. Everything was ruined now, even if he did managed to kill her. His whole life, ruined. A pressure began to build behind his eyes and his throat began to ache, and he thought, _Merlin's beard, I do _not_ want to cry in front of a Weasley_! It didn't matter. His tear ducts weren't listening to his brain anymore. They knew what he was only now beginning to realize: he wasn't a killer. Not even close. He was never going to kill Ginny, not even when he'd been planning to have Tyler do it. He'd always imagined that he would be there, directing Tyler along, but he knew it was so that he could stop Tyler before it was too late.

Draco Malfoy was not a killer and therefore a textbook failure at life.

A tear slid down his cheek, and then another, and another, until he was bawling exuberantly into his elbow. He felt Ginny's hand on his shoulder, comforting him, but that only made it worse. The girl he had spent all semester planning to kill was trying to make _him_ feel better about it. The world didn't make sense.

It was probably just that she hung around with Potter. Potter's particular brand of weirdness was bound to rub off in all sorts of loony ways, like Ginny Weasley trying to comfort Draco Malfoy while he cried over not being able to properly kill her.

"Bloody hell, woman," he blubbered, almost incoherent. "What are you touching me for?"

"Beats me," Ginny replied, and smoothed his hair away from his face. "It's not the end of the world, discovering you're not a murderer."

"It's the end of _my_ world. In case you haven't noticed, my father is a Deatheater."

She smiled a little, just enough to show a slight dimple in her cheek. "It's the end of your place in your father's world, is all, and I can't help but feel good about that. Turns out you're not as awful as you try to be. How does it feel to be a good person?"

Draco glared at her. "Shut your mouth."

"Are you trying to tell me you're an awful person for not killing me? C'mon, Malfoy. Be honest here. You're just not killer material. _Maybe_ petty criminal material, but we can work on that."

"A _Malfoy_ is not a _petty criminal_."

"And yet you play second fiddle to Voldemort. Unless you kill me right this second, Draco Malfoy, I'm marching down there and telling everyone I see that you didn't have the guts to kill me because you're secretly a good person." His eyes widened. "That's why you hate Harry so much, isn't it? Because you wish you were as good a person as him?"

"I am not and never have been envious of Potty Potter!" Draco snarled, so furious that for a second Ginny thought maybe he actually might try to hurt her. But it faded as quickly as it had appeared, replaced with great fatigue. "I'd like to be left alone now, please."

"Think about it, Malfoy. You don't have to be a Deatheater. You don't have to be a saint, either, but you can settle for something in between." She gave him one last meaningful look before climbing to her feet and walking away, her hair swinging gently from side to side. He watched her go feeling as if a weight had been lifted off his chest, letting him breathe for the first time since he could remember, because she was _right_. He didn't have to be a Deatheater. It didn't mean he had to be Potter, either. He had trouble imagining it.

Maybe he'd get a ministry job after Hogwarts. He could do that, probably. There were bound to be jobs that didn't require him to be a genius or particularly good with a wand. His potions scores were pretty good—that might recommend him to a job that paid well enough for a comfortable living.

Being something in between meant he was most likely going to be disowned. He wouldn't have fortune he'd always assumed he'd have. Somehow, though, that didn't bother him. Other people made due without massive familial fortunes, and so could he. Maybe he'd even get married some day, to a girl with red hair and a sweet voice.

He wasn't going to pretend it would be Ginny. She'd probably marry Potter. Life was like that for Draco—it laughed at him, most of the time, and did the opposite of what he wanted. Somewhere out there, though, there'd be another girl, with hair a shade of red almost as vibrant, eyes almost as brown, with a heart almost as good, and he'd marry her, and be envious of Potter for until he died for getting the real thing.

Draco thought he could deal with that.


End file.
